My tent is firmly pitched up the mountain that FromSoftware has made with their Souls/Born/Sekiro games, so you can call me biased all you like. I wouldn’t say I am the type of person that could do a dance mat run by only dabbing it with my left testicle; however, I do enjoy the games. It has taken some time to find that enjoyment, as anyone that is human knows, you hate them to begin with. It has taken a lot of time to break me down and find that pleasure that only comes from having a halberd up my anus all the time.

That being said, I’m not here to review Dark Souls, I’m here to review one of its many imitators. Now earlier this year I had reviewed a 2D attempt at this same monolith, and the controller issues (to my knowledge) persist. I need to bring this up because, with something as precise as Dark Souls, something with its many incongruous design decisions is both good and bad for those decisions. In the spirit of that, I’m systematically going to tell you both why The Surge 2 is both Dark Souls-y goodness and is bad at the same time.

The Surge 2 is another one of those games that with even the slightest change has sent ripples through the overall feeling. The slightest change, such as the button to switch targets while locked on, is like trying to reprogram a computer while it is currently doing the task you are reprogramming it for. It is hard to explain, but every detail matters and yet somehow I don’t need a deep-sea diving team, three weeks, and a paleontologist to get into The Surge 2. Which isn’t to say the story is or isn’t handled with care or complexity.

Now I feel I should say, I didn’t play the first Surge game. Mostly because this was before I had been signed up for a Fifty Shades of Souls party, with the only one below me in that orgy being a David Cage game; we all spat on it and called it names. However, it seems there isn’t much of a connected story either; which is good for new players like me. Super evil tech corp CREO (see Facebook, Twitter, Google), has led the world into hell. Now you are to punch your way out. This is mostly done through attaching power armor from Fallout 4 to everyone from Jean in accounting; to Bob the construction worker. I have heard he can fix things.

In The Surge 2, you play as the nameless, voiceless, and useless create-a-sim character. I assume this is to lean more into the RPG element where you create yourself for no good reason other than to give you a bit of gratification when you beat someone or something big. The issue is trying to tell the story of that create-a-sim character without the stakes to do so. A problem I’d like phrase as, “the Dark Souls 2 problem.”

You see, in Dark Souls the story is about the world, and you don’t know that at the beginning, but it becomes apparent when meeting everyone from the opening cinematic. Dark Souls 2 opts rather for a story about the player character; this what The Surge 2 does but with less nuance. All subtlety, atmosphere, and pacing goes out the window when I both know that something has happened to my character and categorically I don’t care.

You are meant to be the only surviving member of a flight that crashed down into the middle of a dystopian future city. However, there’s a simple cut to a young black girl whom one would assume is implied to be your daughter. The issue is: I don’t care, because there’s no connection between us both through gameplay. However, the story and gameplay from this opening cinematic onwards is largely unconnected, from my understanding.

It is your usual Dark Souls stamina-based combat with punches and swings that take longer than three winter sols (Dark Sols, if you will) on Mars. The thing is, it is the easiest Souls (or Souls-like) game I’ve played. Armor drops with the frequency of radio waves in Bohemia during the reign of the Holy Roman Empire. Though the first boss or mini-boss is beaten without weapons or armor, and the first “proper” Souls-like boss (i.e foggy doors) is so easy I’ve beaten him twice on my first try each time. I’m an idiot, so that should mean something.

Does this mean I recommend it to non-Dark Souls fans? No.

To enjoy The Surge 2 you need to enjoy Dark Souls, which has a wholly unique and rabid fan-base. Even then there’s a small chance you’ll dislike The Surge 2 because of the design that differs or makes the game ‘worse,’ somehow. My favorite example is simply what is done with the right analog stick, something that should never change from camera controls. Now it is a partially useless selection tool. You see, once you are locked on to your enemy you are to select a body part to focus your hits on; say there’s armor you want off of them to make them more killable for example.

As much as this is a new interesting way of weakening opponents, there’s the issue of switching targets and the lack thereof when it comes to camera controls. The funniest of these instances is when you are above or below a target and lock-on, once locked on that’s your camera locked; now when they come to your level, you are in the way. Do you see how stupid this is? Often I’ve found myself locking on while above a target, dropping down to get a strike from above, unlocking and resetting the camera, and then locking on for a fight.

It seems when designing this interesting system to target armor, one did not think of the quote, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” Unfortunately for The Surge 2, its lord is the Godzilla sized monolithic staple that try-hards doing dance mat runs would call perfect. Somehow I don’t believe anyone in existence would call Deck 13’s The Surge 2, “Perfect.”

While I have been partial to kicking it while it is down, I should probably state that there are a few good points to The Surge 2. For a future dystopian setting, I do enjoy the labyrinthian city under construction that curls in, around, and under itself. Unfortunately, that means when you are facing more than one enemy at a time in these tightly designed desolate streets and alleyways, you are going to end up like Pope John XII.

Then there’s the lack of the class system; or at least one that makes a difference. This makes the RPG leveling system reduced to three things: Health, stamina, and battery (a system equivalent of estus). More points in health mean you can be hit more; more points in stamina mean you can hit others more, and points in your battery are points wasted. What makes this less superficial is the implants, which do a multitude of things.

One of these augments is both useful for one thing and useless for its intended purpose, the warning system for blocking. Blocking uses some of your stamina and is as useful as reading a book about parrying in the dark. What this augment is perfect for is knowing where not to be. It’s like algebra, once you know X is going to do Y, you do Z. In this case, X is an enemy, Y is them charging for you, and Z is you taking a step backwards. It is made simple, but also is not how it was intended to be used, a bit like my education.

Though as Newton’s third law says: “For everything good in a Souls-like game, there’s something stupid as well.” Ahead of his time that Isaac Newton guy, they thought he was mad. So with that let’s return to the armor dropping frequency, which is sparse to say the very least. So it was a little confusing to be told, “Turn on your light!” in a dark spot, only to find you need a chest piece (something I didn’t have) to turn on your light. In fact, you need a chest piece you have to craft after finding a schematic. After all that work, it lights up nothing more than a fly’s genitals on the other end of your own nose.

What’s worse is who you fight, if Dark Souls 2 got a bit too comfortable with dudes in armor, The Surge 2 is too comfortable with Mad Max rejects and Spider-Man’s defective robots early on. With the cover being War of the Worlds, you’d think you’d be fighting Optimus Prime, or possibly fighting sex robots that have gotten out of control. No, most of the time it is just a bunch of dudes with hacksaws strapped to every appendage they have. The first big electro-beast I found I had disabled before knowing what I’d done. It was the size of a small SUV, hardly monstrous.

In conclusion, The Surge 2 would be a fine game if it wasn’t trying to be another Souls-like game. What makes it unique is often its flaws, sadly. Being compared to something that set the groundwork for the strange, and the somewhat eponymous sub-genre that is Dark Souls isn’t bad but isn’t great either. Many hours in, aside from the lock-on/camera issues, I don’t have a reason to stop playing through different save files with different builds. Unlike Dark Devotion, I want to wrap this up so I can go play a bit more.

An Xbox One review copy of The Surge 2 was provided by Focus Home Interactive for this review.

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The Surge 2

$49.99 USD

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• A great sprawling map.
• A streamlined RPG.

Cons

• A lack of camera controls once locked on.
• A little bit of a mess.